This poster I’ve created is meant to be an advertisement promoting my fictitious TV/movie production company, Good Morning Productions.
This project was inspired by a couple of things. The main inspiration I drew from was old poster adverts movie and TV studios would put to promote themselves and the projects they’ve made as well as try to attract new people to join the studio. I have a collection of these old posters on my computer as well as a book featuring many of them so finding reference was not hard.
I also drew inspiration from PT Barnum circus advertisements. This is where I got the idea for the colored border. Barnum’s circus ads always had really nice colors too that really popped and that inspired me to include the sunset and the purple Hollywood hills.
Once I came up with the general idea I started sketching out what I wanted the poster to look like. I wanted to capture the glamour and sleekness of old LA so I chose to use the Hollywood hills and a spotlight, both cornerstones of old Hollywood and TV production. Then I knew I wanted to include photos of me and my team creating content so I thought the best way to do this would be to include behind the scenes photos within film strips, so it still makes my overall aesthetic and works with the similarity aspect of the Gestalt Theory.
Collecting photos was not too difficult. I have been making videos for years now and over that time I’ve accumulate some nice behind the scenes photos. Originally, in my first draft the pictures I included were more abstract and in my critiques this was mentioned. So, for this final I decided to use more explicit pictures that clearly show me and my team using cameras, lights, green screens, and other tools used in the production world. I also decided to increase the saturation
There were a few graphics that I also used. I got these off of various free use picture websites and the links and what type of creative commons each graphic falls under is listed at the end of this blog post.
Now that I had gathered all the necessary elements it was time to assemble my project. As I mentioned, I wanted to include a lot of colors and I thought the best way to do this would be to use color gradients. I also decided to use this tool because sunrises, like the one I included in the background, are usually a spectrum of colors that starts with one shade of orange or yellow and then morphs into a more pinkish color. I also used a color gradient to give the light emitting from the spotlight a more translucent look, like an actual spotlight’s light beam.
Since I used analogues colors for the sunset and spotlight, I knew I would have to use a complementary color to the orange hues for the Hollywood hills. When I looked at a color wheel the color most complementary to orange was purple. This works on another level too, since sunrise often makes landscapes appear to be in a purplish hue.
I decided the font for the production company’s name, Good Morning, should be bubbly, open, and inviting so I went with a pre-saved font on my computer called Agent Orange. This font is sans-serif so that production company’s name can be visible on the poster from far away. Then for the word productions I wanted it to look more professional.
Finally, I used the texture trick we learned during the Photoshop tutorials to blend my final poster with a picture I took of a folded piece of paper. This was to tribute the old posters I based my project on and make my project look more real.
During my draft the biggest difficulty I faced was trying to crop all the graphics I used so they had transparent backgrounds. Often times little pieces of the background would be left on the image when I used the magnetic lasso or magic wand tool. Originally, to remedy this I used the feather tool. Then on my final, I further solved this problem by using the Refine Edge tool to smooth, feather, and contrast the edge of the images to make them look as clean as possible.
Another critique I got during the feedback portion of this assignment was the edges of my poster were too clean and straight and ruined the illusion that it was an old poster. This was challenging because everything I tried to make the edges of the poster look folded or cut ended up look sloppy or not convincing. Finally, I found the puppet warp tool and after playing around with it for a while I think I ended up with a pretty convincing effect.
Sources:
Hollywood Sign:
https://dumielauxepices.net/wallpaper-3989234
Public Domain/Free Culture
Film Strip:
https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/film-roll_1020923.htm#term=film&page=1&position=0
Free Commercial Use with Attribution
Spotlight:
Free Use with Attribution
Noah Benson 
